GARY MICHAEL HEIDNIK: BIOGRAPHY AND MURDERS - ARTE - 2024

Gary Michael Heidnik (1943-1999) was the American assassin who kidnapped, tortured and raped several women in Philadelphia, two of whom died at his hands. His victims were prostitutes of African American origin and he became known as "the baby sower" as his goal was to create what he called "a baby farm."

Heidnik has been listed by many as a serial killer. However, although he was a psychopath, his objective was not to murder, but to keep his victims alive to abuse them physically and sexually.

Gary Michael Heidnik

He was also charged with cannibalism by allegedly feeding his victims the remains of one of the women he murdered. However, although he did dismember one of his victims, this charge could not be proven.

Childhood and youth

Gary Heidnik was born on November 21, 1943 in Eastlake, in the state of Ohio, USA His parents, Michael and Ellen Heidnik, divorced when the boy was just three years old.

In court the father accused the mother of being an alcoholic and violent. Gary and his younger brother Terry went to live with their mother, who soon remarried. But when the boy was old enough to attend school, both brothers moved in with their father, who had also married a second time.

Heidnik did not have a very normal childhood. Due to the separation of his parents, his family environment was quite negative. His father was a very severe man who constantly abused him emotionally and physically.

Psychological abuse

In addition, as he would tell years later, his father used to humiliate him frequently because he suffered from urinary incontinence, even forcing him to hang the wet sheets on the window of his room for the neighbors to see. In fact, it is said that he once hung it out the window, keeping it suspended by the ankles at about twenty feet.

Another trauma that would add to his already tragic childhood was his life at school. And it is that when he was still very young, he fell from a tree and this caused a deformity in his head. His schoolmates used to make fun of him and even nicknamed him “football head” or “The big head”.

Because of all this and perhaps because of his problems at home, he was not a very friendly child at school. He did not interact with his peers and refused to make eye contact. Despite this, and contrary to what would be thought, Heidnik had a good academic performance. In fact, his IQ was 130.

His life in the army

Heidnik began to develop a liking for the military world and for this reason, when he was 14 years old, he asked his father to enter a military school. Thus he enrolled in the now defunct Staunton Military Academy located in Virginia. He studied there for two years but dropped out just before graduating. She spent another stint in public high school until she finally dropped out as well.

At the end of 1960, already 18 years old, he joined the United States Army, and served for 13 months. During his basic training he was rated by one of the sergeants as an excellent student. After completing his training, he applied for various positions as a specialist, including the military police, but was rejected.

Medicine studies

Later he was sent to San Antonio, Texas, to be trained as a doctor. In this training he also did well, so much so that in 1962 he was transferred to a military hospital in West Germany. After a couple of weeks there, he got his certification.

Mental disorders

A short time later, he began to show certain signs of mental disorder. In August 1962, Heidnik reported ill. He complained of severe headaches, dizziness, blurred vision, and nausea. A neurologist at the hospital diagnosed him with gastroenteritis. But he noticed that he also displayed unusual psychological traits.

At the time he prescribed Stelazine, a fairly strong tranquilizer prescribed for people suffering from hallucinations. In October of that same year, he was transferred to a military hospital in Philadelphia, where he was diagnosed with schizoid personality disorder. Thus he was honorably discharged and awarded a mental disability pension.

However, according to prosecutor Charlie Gallagher, Heidnik was not happy with the assignment he was given to work as a doctor in Germany. For this reason, he pretended to have a mental illness to obtain a medical discharge and a 100% disability pension.

On the other hand, one of his friends assured that the initial mental breakdown was legitimate. However, that probably gave him the idea to keep pretending to get money as a disabled person.

Nursing classes

In 1964, Heidnik decided to take nursing classes at the University of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania. A year later she completed her studies and took an internship at Philadelphia General Hospital. In 1967 she bought a three-story house and began to frequent the Elwyn Institute, a home for people with mental disabilities.

Despite having continued with his studies and having gotten a job, the murderer spent several years in and out of psychiatric hospitals, and he also attempted suicide 13 times.

Your criminal activity

In 1971, Heidnik created his own church on North Marshall Street, Philadelphia, which he called the "United Church of God's Ministers." He became the bishop himself and established a series of rules.

In 1975 he opened an account with the investment company Merrill Lynch in the name of his church. The initial deposit was $ 1,500, but after a while it accumulated more than half a million dollars tax-free. The murderer was the one who completely managed the money by making investments in the stock market.

Heidnik had a particular fixation on women of color, and especially those with some form of mental retardation. So in 1976 he sold his house and bought another to move in with his girlfriend Anjeanette Davidson, who was mentally disabled. Two years later, in 1978, he took his girlfriend's sister, a mentally challenged young woman named Alberta, from a psychiatric hospital.

First arrest

The criminal took her home, locked her up, raped her and sodomized her. Later, when the woman was found chained in the basement of his home, Heidnik was arrested and charged with aggravated assault, as well as kidnapping and rape. The criminal was sentenced to prison and was released in April 1983.

After getting out of jail, Heidnik bought a third house and started advertising his church again. In 1985 he married Betty Disco, a Filipino woman whom he met through a marriage agency. However, that union did not last long, since soon the wife discovered that her husband was unfaithful to her with three other women.

Additionally, it was known that the criminal not only beat his wife and deprived her of food, but also forced her to observe him while he had sex with his lovers. Disco abandoned Heidnik and later, when she filed a child support claim, the killer learned that they had had a child.

With the abandonment of his wife in 1986, the criminal had the perfect excuse to start his wave of kidnappings and rapes. Heidnik was eager to have a harem of women to be his sex slaves.

Second kidnapping

Thus, on November 25 of that year, he decided to kidnap Josefina Rivera, an African-American prostitute. He took her home and after having sex with her, he beat her and chained her in the basement of the house. The criminal dug a well in the basement floor and placed Rivera inside and subsequently covered the hole with a heavy board.

Other kidnappings

Just a few days later, on December 3, 1986, Heidnik abducted Sandra Lindsay, a young woman with mental retardation who had previously become pregnant with the murderer, but decided to abort the child.

On December 23, he brought in another girl, 19-year-old Lisa Thomas. A week later, on January 2, 1987, Heidnik kidnapped Deborah Dudley.

During her time in captivity, she tried to defend herself, but was beaten and locked in the hole more times than the others. Following Dudley's arrival, Heidnik set about humiliating the four women even more. She not only forced them to have sex with each other but also to eat dog food.

On January 18, the killer kidnapped Jacquelyn Askins. In early February the killer became enraged at Lindsay and punished her by tying her wrists to a ceiling beam. He hung her for a week and in that time forced her to eat pieces of bread. Already with a fever and very weak, the girl ended up asphyxiated.

According to the victims, the murderer subsequently took the body, dismembered it, put the head in a pot and cut its meat. Then he fed them and their dog the young woman's human remains. Over time, Josefina Rivera realized that the only way to save herself from that horrible fate was to play along with the criminal. Little by little she tried to gain her trust, making her believe that she was on her side. Thus it was becoming her favorite.

The next to die was Deborah Dudley, since due to her rebellious nature she was not intimidated by Heidnik. The killer created another form of punishment. He forced the girls to get into the hole in the ground and used Josefina to fill it with water, forcing her to touch the other victims with a wire through which current passed. This was precisely the cause of Dudley's death, who was quickly replaced by the kidnapping Agnes Adams on March 24.

Arrest

Paradoxically, it was Josefina who craftily earned Heidnik's trust, it was his undoing.

After the kidnapping of the last victim, Rivera convinced the criminal to give him permission to visit his family. Incredibly, he agreed. In this way at the slightest opportunity the woman can leave, she went with an ex-boyfriend, who accompanied her to the police, thus achieving the arrest of the psychopath and murderer Gary Michael Heidnik.

His arrest and conviction

Following Josefina's complaint, on March 25, 1987, the police raided Heidnik's house. There, in the basement, they found three women in a serious condition: chained, naked, beaten and malnourished. Her trial began in June 1988. To defend herself, the murderer made a completely unlikely plea.

He claimed that the women he had kidnapped were already in the basement when he moved into the house. Afterward, the defense tried to pass him off as insane. However, the argument was refuted by the fact that he had been smart enough to make thousands of dollars in the stock market.

On July 1, Heidnik was convicted of two counts of first degree murder, five counts of kidnapping, six counts of rape, and four counts of aggravated battery. For this he was sentenced to the death penalty. On December 31, while waiting for his execution date, he tried to commit suicide with an overdose of chlorpromazine, but only fell into a momentary coma.

His execution was scheduled for April 15, 1997, however, an appeal was filed at the last minute that led to a hearing to determine his mental competence. On June 25, 1999, the State Supreme Court upheld his death sentence and on July 6, he was executed by lethal injection.

Gary Heidnik's psychological profile

Although Gary Heidnik was diagnosed with schizoid personality disorder, it was later suspected that the killer had only faked his early troubles in order to be compensated and earn money without having to work.

The truth is that after his arrest, psychologists and psychiatrists could not agree on the criminal's illness, nor did they find a connection between his manias and his twisted mind.

According to specialists, nervous tics, depression and antisocial habits were not signs of dementia. So then he came to be described in various ways: psychopathic, schizophrenic, unbalanced, but never insane, at least not in legal terms.